They Stuck Us with Chuck

Eighteen spineless wonders in the Senate voted for cloture, ending debate over Hagel’s nomination. Instead of a 60 vote requirement to end a filibuster, the result was the need for only a simple majority of the Senate voting, for successful confirmation as Secretary of Defense. A big thank you from the voters goes to that claque of erudite Senators led by none other than John “Keating Five” McCain, and followed by Lamar Alexander (TN), Kelly Ayotte (NH), Roy Blunt (MO), Richard Burr (NC), Saxby Chambliss (GA.), Tom Coburn (OK), Thad Cochran (MS), Susan Collins (ME), Bob Corker (TN), Jeff Flake (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC), Orrin Hatch (UT), Mike Johanns (NE), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Jeff Sessions (AL), Richard Shelby (AL), and John Thune (SD). Clearly Kool-Aid is being served in Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee where both of each States’ Senators voted for cloture.

“Americans have a right to be stupid,” as stated by our new Secretary of State, John Kerry. We sure do. The pols in Washington are counting on just that. The majority of American voters will take their entitlement hand-outs and just shut up. Then, at every two and four year intervals, we’ll trot out to the polls like good little kindergartners grateful for their candy, and vote them back into office.

Bill Kristol, Editor of The Weekly Standard, who is also Chairman of the Emergency Fund for Israel, was quoted,

“We fought the good fight, and are proud to have done so. We salute all those — Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Jews — who joined with us in the effort to secure a better Secretary of Defense. We are heartened that the overwhelming majority of senators from one of the two major parties voted against confirming Mr. Hagel. We take some comfort in Mr. Hagel’s confirmation conversions on the issues of Israel and Iran, and do believe that, as a result of this battle, Mr. Hagel will be less free to pursue dangerous policies at the Defense Department and less inclined to advocate them within the administration. And since hope is an American characteristic and a Jewish virtue, we will also say that we hope Mr. Hagel will rise to the occasion and successfully discharge his weighty duties. In this task we wish him well.

This battle against Chuck Hagel is over. The fight for a principled, pro-Israel foreign policy goes on.”

What a piece of drivel. What fight? When has there ever been a more incompetent candidate sent up for nomination as Secretary of Defense. John Tower, who was defeated not for incompetence, but for his randy social life (a.k.a. women and booze) and his previous work for defense contractors, looks like Thucydides compared to Chuck.

Despite Senator James Inhofe’s (R-OK) letter to his colleagues, warning that a vote for cloture was a vote for confirmation, his pleas fell on the proverbial deaf ears. “Deference to the President,” “the President has a right to choose his Cabinet,” I believe, were the common rejoinders. The Founding Fathers specifically put in place the checks and balances necessary for a constitutional republic. Advise and consent. But then, we’re daily watching our Constitution being trashed with Executive Orders, DHS drones, and other Administration ploys.

Stuck with Chuck we are, joining John Kerry as the second component of Obama’s foreign policy brain trust. After a recent 2011 speech came to light with Hagel’s statement that India financed problems in Pakistan from Afghanistan, the Obama Administration and US Embassy in India are quickly distancing themselves from Hagel. The first of many situations to be sure, especially when the University of Nebraska is through indexing and archiving Hagel’s scholarly speeches.

John Kerry, too, in his new role as Secretary of State, will eventually learn that Kyrzakhstan is not a country, but Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are. Remember, “Americans have a right to be stupid.”

North Korea’s boy-leader continues his country’s nuclear tests, China wages cyber war against the US, when it’s not busy ramping up in the South China Sea testing Japan’s will over the Senkaku Islands, thousands more are killed in Syria, rockets are fired into Israel from Gaza, and Iran edges closer to a nuclear weapon. Not to worry, we can all be assured that Chuck and the two Johns (Kerry and Brennan) have our backs. And with Jack “okay, so I lied about the sequester” Lew at Treasury, we’ll all go broke together as a country, that is, if there’s still a country left.